Mr Fox

Halliwell believed Benedick’s line in Much Ado about Nothing, it is not so, nor ’twas not so, but indeed God forbid it should be so, came from a nursery story Shakespeare had heard as a child, and Chambers retells it. Lady Mary goes alone to the house of her suitor Mr Fox and finds over the door the warning Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, and within a chamber full of skeletons and blood. Hiding under the stairs she sees him drag in a young lady and cut off her hand, which falls into her lap. At dinner she tells it all as a dream, ending each part with It is not so, nor it was not so, and Mr Fox takes up the refrain, adding and God forbid it should be so, until she answers that it is so and brings out the hand and bracelet, and the guests cut him to pieces. The same warning over a door appears in Spenser’s Faerie Queene.